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Clinicians have until March 31 to submit 2017 performance data for the Quality Payment Program established after passage of Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA). HealthExec spoke with Beth Houck, MBA, the vice president of client services at value-based program compliance and analytics software company SA Ignite, at the HIMSS18 conference in Las Vegas.

Idaho’s plan to allow health insurers to offer coverage which doesn’t comply with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would result in CMS fining insurance companies and taking over the state’s role in enforcing the law, essentially denying the state’s proposal to violate the ACA—but also offering the state some guidance on how it could approve the plans in the future.

CMS Administrator Seema Verma, MPH, announced at HIMSS18 in Las Vegas new agency initiatives aimed at promoting interoperability and giving patients easier access to health records, drawing applause for talk about reforming regulations while the audience of health IT professionals sat silent when she warned of a crackdown on information blocking.

Does immigration status affect Medicaid enrollment through the Affordable Care Act (ACA), both in states that expanded services and those that did not? Recent research found no differences in Medicaid coverage between mixed-status households and non-mixed-status households. But in states that did not expand Medicaid, coverage rates were lower for individuals in mixed-status households compared to the non-mixed-status population.&nbsp;

A group of U.S. senators has sent a letter to dozens of healthcare industry groups asking for more information on what price and quality information is available to consumers and what regulations may be getting in the way of greater price transparency.

A group of senators has introduced a new bill aimed at fighting opioid abuse and addiction, including limits on initial prescriptions for acute pain and an expanded role for non-physician practitioners in prescribing buprenorphine.

In an article for Health Affairs, a group of fellows at the Brookings Institution made the case for replacing the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) with &ldquo;stronger incentives&rdquo; to move into alternative payment models (APMs).

In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)&rsquo;s individual mandate. With the mandate&rsquo;s penalty now eliminated under President Donald Trump, 20 states are using the earlier ruling as the basis for a new lawsuit seeking to &ldquo;effectively repeal Obamacare.&rdquo;

HHS Secretary Alex Azar is set to meet this week with Idaho Gov. Butch Otter and the state&rsquo;s insurance director, Dean Cameron, over their recently announced plans to allow insurers to offer coverage that doesn&rsquo;t follow the Affordable Care Act (ACA), while Iowa is considering a similar move through its state legislature.

To help combat opioid addiction and abuse, the American Medical Association (AMA) suggested the Senate consider more than a dozen policies on everything from allowing Medicare to cover methadone in outpatient treatment programs to creating an addiction treatment-centered alternative payment model.

The Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal-leaning think tank, has added a proposal to the debate on how to achieve universal health coverage but without moving the U.S. to a single-payer healthcare system&mdash;though providers would be paid less than they currently are by private insurance and hospitals would need to adapt to a big expansion of bundled payments.

Under a newly proposed rule from HHS, short-term health insurance coverage that doesn&rsquo;t comply with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would be more widely available, which the agency admitted may lead to insurer losses on the ACA exchanges if younger, healthier customers leave that market to buy short-term plans.

For two decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has supposedly been blocked from conducting research into the health effects of gun violence by a budget amendment. HHS Secretary Alex Azar has a different opinion, telling members of Congress Thursday he would allow the CDC to conduct research which doesn&rsquo;t veer into advocacy.

Providers have until March 12 to apply for CMS&rsquo;s new Bundled Payments for Care Improvement (BPCI) Advanced model, though the program was only unveiled on Jan. 9. Considering the details CMS has given about the model, that&rsquo;s not enough time for hospitals to decide whether to participate, according to the American Hospital Association (AHA).

In his first congressional testimony since being confirmed as HHS Secretary, Alex Azar argued the department&rsquo;s proposed budget would extend the life of Medicare while making HHS more efficient by cutting nearly $18 billion in funding.